Despite recent rains, people around here are freaking out about water. The condition is serious. The few inches of rain we got last week don’t come close to making up for all of the dry months we’ve endured so far.

Endangered salmon, all but wiped out by rapacious logging practices of the past, now face unseasonably low flows in all of our local rivers, and tributaries aggressively dewatered by pot farmers, squeezed between deflated marijuana prices and inflated lifestyle expectations.

You probably think, “So what? Go ahead and liquidate (pun intended) the last wild salmon habitat in the lower 48. See if I care.” You’re a red-blooded American. You know that capitalism is all about transforming the natural beauty and bounty of nature into money, and everyone wants more money, right?

We don’t need slimy fish getting jiggy in creeks in the middle of nowhere. We need more shitty customer service jobs where desperately poor people can learn to kiss ass. We don’t give a fuck about lazy, good for nuthin’, low-life salmon who swim around eatin’ free krill all day, and we don’t want to see them loitering on private property, looking for a fishy piece of tail.

So face facts. We can either write the salmon off, as part of the cost of doing business, or we can admit that capitalism was a stupid idea, that never worked, and abandon it. If you want to live under a system that treats human beings as worthless garbage, then don’t expect overworked, impoverished or homeless people to give fuck about salmon habitat, you bourgeois elitist egghead. If you want habitat, dump capitalism, if not, then stop whining about the disappearing wildlife and fix me a cappuccino, and make it snappy!

Really, most people I know are about one eviction, lay-off or diagnosis away from killing themselves. Some of them will probably take out as many other people as they possibly can, first. Don’t bother them with your concerns about a fucking fish they’ve never seen, and can’t afford to eat, if you know what’s good for you.

On the other hand, we all need marijuana. None of us could endure another day of capitalism without it. That’s why every one of us needs to step up to the plate, and do our part to conserve water. Unless we all do our part to save water, Humboldt County’s pot farmers won’t have enough water to produce that bumper crop of bloated, over-fertilized, overpriced buds that we’ve become accustomed to.

So, for what it’s worth, here’s a list of simple measures that you can take to conserve water, in hopes that we can save Humboldt County’s marijuana crop from the insatiable libido of freeloading fish.

This fist tip seems like a no-brainer to me, but it always amazes me how many people still don’t get it. Here in SoHum, this concept remains quite controversial and hotly debated. It seems simple to me: When confronted with a container of fresh, clean potable water, even if it is only half-full, DON’T SHIT IN IT! Don’t pee in it either. Does that sound controversial to you?

I know we have laws that require every home, and most businesses to provide a refillable bowl of clean water specifically for this purpose, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it. We have lots of stupid laws that we’ve all learned to ignore; just add those to the list. We can no longer afford to participate in this misguided, wasteful, antiquated tradition. It’s time to get your shit up to date. Compost it, incinerate it, bury it, or eat it, for all I care, just don’t contaminate our water with it.

Pee on a tree, or pee into a jar and leave it along side the highway. If you find yourself forced to use a public restroom, relieve yourself anywhere but into the water. Shit in the waste basket. Pee in the sink, or on the floor, or on the toilet paper rolls, just not into the water. Show some decency for God’s sake.

Here’s another no-brainer that has the potential to save millions of gallons of water: STOP WASHING YOUR TRUCK!. Look, it’s a fucking truck. It’s not a status symbol. It’s a work vehicle. I know half of you don’t know what work is, but work trucks get dirty, and working people have better things to do than spend their day off detailing them. A little mud and dust won’t hurt your precious truck, and if you don’t like the color of Humboldt County dirt, maybe you should move.

Guys around here buy trucks, not so much for work, but to compensate for, how shall I put this, shrunken masculinity. They buy the biggest trucks they can possibly find, which they then wash, bumper to bumper, at least once a week. To compensate for a shortage of an inch or two, Humboldt County men waste thousands of acre-feet of water every year by excessively washing their excessive trucks. So, I’ve come up with a media campaign to address this, water wasting, target demographic. I encourage everyone to purchase, and proudly display on the bumper of your own dusty vehicle, this bumper sticker:

Well that takes care of the low-hanging (or I suppose, the not-so-low hanging) fruit, when it comes to water conservation. The rest of these tips will take some getting used to, but believe me, they are all worth the effort.

ENJOY YOUR COFFEE DRY. Did you know that it takes 80 gallons of water to make one cup of coffee. I heard that on KMUD recently. That must make some pretty weak coffee. If that is KMUD’s recipe, I’m never buying their iced coffee again. You can save all of that water if, instead of grinding the beans, brewing the coffee, pouring it into a cup, and adding cream and sugar, just eat the coffee beans dry.

A few dry espresso beans will get you moving in the morning as well as any fancy coffee drink, and you’ll save a lot of time, effort and expense. Espresso beans are deliciously crunchy, and only a little will stick between your teeth.

AVOID WATERPIPES. Smoke joints instead of bongloads. Bongs and other waterpipes waste water by making it really funky and gross. By substituting joints for bongloads, you might save as much as a gallon of water per week, depending on how much you smoke and how often you clean your bong.

SNORT YOUR MEDS If you take prescription drugs of any kind, you can conserve water by grinding your pills into a fine powder and snorting them, rather than washing them down with an unnecessary and wasteful glass of water. By snorting your meds you’ll find that the medicine gets into your system faster, and you may even experience a pleasant “rush”, which means you’ll start feeling better, sooner than if you had simply followed your doctor’s instructions. This will give those aging boomers a good excuse to dust off their old grooved mirror and sterling silver razor blade from back in the “70s.

Finally, even hard drug users can help conserve water by:

REJECT INJECTION Injecting drugs intravenously may be the most efficient drug delivery system, but each syringe full of meth or heroin wastes at least one full tablespoon of water. Remember, we have plenty of hard drugs in Humboldt County, but water is scarce, so buy more drugs and use less water. Here’s a little rhyme to help you remember: Buy enough to smoke or snort so our water supply won’t run short.

There we have a few simple measures we can all take to prevent a bunch of horny fish from ruining Humboldt County’s marijuana crop. And if you really want to save the fish, work to legalize marijuana, because until we get the marijuana industry out of the hands of drug-dealing dope yuppies, hiding out in the hills, and put it into the hands of competent farmers, working land where all of the endangered species have already been annihilated, you can count the last wild salmon populations in the lower 48 as the latest casualties in the war on drugs.

Today (written on Sat. Feb 15) in SoHum, an unusual event is taking place behind the Renner Petroleum Station between Garberville and Redway. I’m not there, of course, because it’s pouring rain, but today, SoHum’s hardier hash-makers have gathered in a rain drenched parking lot to experience the very first (so far as I know), SoHum Hash-Makers Fair. I’m helping them out with the name, but this is a real event.

Officially, they call the event the Garberville Grass Concentrate Awareness Vender Fair, which rolls off the tongue like a mouthful of extra-chunky peanut butter mixed with epoxy,

…but whatever you call it, right now, a bunch of very wet people are demonstrating the latest hash-making technology in a parking lot behind a gas station on the outskirts of town. I’m excited about this! I’ll bet the Garberville Grass Concentrate Awareness Vender Fair, despite the sticky name, is the only hash-makers fair in the entire US. I wish I could be there.

I mean, I’m glad I’m snug and warm at home on this very rainy day, but I hope the show does well, despite the much needed rain. I think I would really enjoy the event, and imagine that it could become quite popular. I, like most American cannabis enthusiasts, prefer to smoke cannabis herb, rather than hash, but hash will do in a pinch, and if made well, hash can be delightful.

In fact, most cannabis consumers would rather have a small quantity of very good hash, rather than a big pile of really shitty weed. That’s why people around here make hash. In Europe and Asia, they make hash for ease of transport, for smuggling. Here in Humboldt County, hash is about recycling.

Hash is about using the whole plant, not just the manicured sinsimilla buds. I’m into recycling and everything, but the real reason I think the hash-makers fair sounds fun, is the people it would attract.

SoHum’s dope yuppies, the land-owning dope growers, don’t usually mess around with hash. They grow cannabis as a cash crop, and the cash comes from the flowers. Sinsemilla flowers are always in demand, anywhere in America, while hash is a harder sell, at least in the US.

Dope yuppies need that cash flow, so they focus on producing those flowers, and don’t worry much about what happens to the rest of the plant. A lot of them don’t even grow or process their own weed anymore. Instead, they have sharecroppers, trimmers, and pot slaves to do it for them. They might never even see the weed from seed to harvest to sale. They just take the cash.

Those sharecroppers, trimmers and pot slaves make all of the hash around here. That’s why the hash-making crowd is a much friendlier, funner and less stuck-up bunch of folks than you are likely to run into on any given night at The Mateel. The hash-makers I know around here are some of the nicest people I know, and they’re always eager to share a bowl really good hash, and the hash around here is outstanding.

These scrappy, resourceful artisans really appreciate marijuana. They hate to see all of that leaf and trim go to waste. They know there’s not much of a market for it, but they make hash anyway. A lot of these people take their hash-making pretty seriously, and produce top-notch hashish in a variety of forms, and by a variety of methods. Thanks to them, we seem to have entered a new hash-making renaissance, centered right here in Humboldt County, as evidenced by today’s fair.

Several of the companies demonstrating their wares at the fair, base their operations right here in Humboldt County, founded by former pot slaves who posses a passion for concentrated cannabis. I wish them all the luck in the world. I hope their hash-making start-ups succeed, and that the SoHum Hash-Makers Fair grows in the future.

Sure, I would enjoy seeing live demonstrations of hash-making technology. I’d like to see them haul out a couple of truckloads of shake and turn it into hash before my very eyes.

Of course we’d all love to sample the finished product too,

…but this is just the beginning. Imagine where the SoHum Hash-Makers Fair could go from there. They could have an “Iron Lung competition” to see who could smoke the most hash without coughing, while the rest of us hack and spit like angry camels.

They could serve a variety of throat-soothing beverages. At the hash-makers fair, you’ll need them.

What about hash edibles? With the fair falling so close to Valentines Day, I’d think hash chocolates would be a natural. While the chlorophyll in cannabis herb clashes with the taste of chocolate, good hash contains no chlorophyll, and blends nicely with dark chocolate. Who wouldn’t like a box of hash chocolates for Valentines Day? …and what would compliment a nice rich hash chocolate better than a piping hot hashaccino? Mmmm coffee with hash. I’m getting stoned just thinking about it, or maybe I’m just thinking about it because I’m getting stoned.

How about belly dancing? Belly dancing and hash go together like coffee and chocolate. I’ll bet we have as many belly dancers in Humboldt County as we have hash-makers, and I’m sure there’s some crossover there. February might be a little cold for belly dancers, but a couple of good heaters should solve that problem. Do you see the potential?

…and that’s just the beginning. Imagine what could happen if this fair got really successful. Maybe some of the companies that sponsor it could set up some big attractions.

For instance, the people who make equipment for cold-water hash extraction could bring a water flume ride.

The folks who make kief tumblers could set up a Ferris Wheel,

…and the company that makes butane extraction tubes could sponsor a fireworks display.

In fact I think the whole butane extraction part of the fair could be like Burning Man. They could have all kinds of wild fire-art displays that also make hash.

The whole butane hash oil extraction process seems more than a little crazy to me, but it’s all the rage right now. If you gave me a choice between extracting hash with ice water, and doing it by emptying an entire can of butane lighter fuel into my immediate environment, I’d choose the ice water every time. That’s just me.

I’ll bet if you randomly took people off the street, handed them a brand new can of butane and told them to go sit in a room and empty the can into the air around them, then light a match, no one would be stupid enough to do it. Somehow, adding marijuana to the equation makes it seem like a good idea.

Some people hate to do anything unless there’s an element of danger involved. So, now we have a hash-making method for thrill-seekers and pyros. At least they could offer a safety course at the fair.

Think about it… fireworks, rides, belly dancing, chocolate, coffee, contests, hash-making and safety meetings. That’s a fair with something for everyone. I hope I see you there next year.

When I first moved to Humboldt County, I thought that no one should go to jail for gardening, least of all, for growing cannabis. I felt strongly about this. I went so far as to don a funny hat and carry a sign to voice my disapproval of the war on drugs, and specifically against marijuana prohibition.

I love marijuana, cannabis, pot, weed, ganja, grass, whatever you want to call it. I think it is a beautiful and sacred plant. I like growing cannabis, I like smoking it, eating it, drinking it and sharing it with friends. I felt that no one should be punished for their involvement with it, be they in possession of it, under the influence of it or involved in cultivating it. Today, I feel differently.

Today, I think Humboldt County dope yuppies should be sent to someplace like Guantanamo Bay, and water-boarded with their own nutrient solution. Specifically, every time I hear someone around here complain about the falling price of marijuana, I want to see them choking, spitting and pleading for their life while Dick Cheney personally holds the watering wand over their Saran Wrapped face, a solution of piss, manure and decomposing organic filth raining down their throats as they squirm and writhe in agony.

I, like all good people everywhere, am overjoyed that marijuana prices have begun to fall, and that the bitter end of the drug war finally appears to be in sight. We still have lots of work to do. Pot prices remain outrageously high despite recent declines, and too many innocent people still get arrested for minor marijuana possession, but at least we seem to have won the battle for the hearts and minds of the American public. We still need to mobilize that support to overturn draconian prohibition laws, but at last, it seems, the momentum is on our side.

Of course, we can’t expect Humboldt County dope yuppies to to help. They’re the disease. Don’t expect them to be part of the cure. Really, dope yuppies don’t care about the social costs of prohibition. They’ve all seen their friends busted. Half of them have been busted themselves. They know how traumatic that is on families. They don’t care.

They know about all of the murders, the missing persons cases, the home-invasion robberies, the violent crime, and the hard drugs that come along with a reliance on black-market dealers. They never stop complaining about the homelessness and poverty, even though they cause most of it. They know Humboldt county has double or triple the murder rate, suicide rate and meth abuse rate of the rest of California. If they ever visited the Garberville Branch of the Humboldt County library, which they don’t, they’d know that the roof leaks, they only have two computers, that barely work, and that the library has no wifi connectivity at all. Blinded by the money that the illegal trade in black-market marijuana brings in, they hardly notice the lack of social capital in their community.

Instead, they blow their money on parties and status symbols. They already have one huge, expensive concert venue, and they can’t wait to build another one. They drive gigantic gas-guzzling trucks and clear the forest to build enormous Connecticut-style, middle-class, suburban homes. Once the narco-dollars started pouring in, they turned their backs on the greater community and began “keeping up with the Joneses”.

So, don’t worry about what happens to Humboldt County’s dope yuppies when prohibition ends. Celebrate, when the price of an oz of kind bud drops below $50, because some big, legal, publicly traded company wants to be the WalMart of weed. Enjoy it! Don’t fret about the plight of Humboldt’s pot farmers, because Humboldt County growers never gave a fuck about you.

Not once have I heard a Humboldt County dope yuppie say: “Man, it really sucks that marijuana has to be so expensive for people.” or “With prices of food and energy rising so fast, how on Earth can working people afford the marijuana they need?” or even, “I’ll bet more people would survive cancer if medical marijuana didn’t cost so much.” Not once have I ever heard that sentiment expressed by a Humboldt County grower.

They all know how great marijuana is, and they keep tons of it around the house for their own use. They’ve got cannabis tincture to relieve menstrual cramps, cannabis salve for muscle aches, and hash-laced chocolates for aphrodisiacs. They make cosmic brownies, cookies and goo-balls. They make juice, decoctions and tea from it, and they keep at least four or five different flavors of marijuana, and maybe two or three different kinds of hash around for their personal smoking pleasure.

I don’t knock them for this. I’m with them. It’s great to have plenty of marijuana. Cannabis is wonderful. It’s good for a lot of things, and offers a lot of benefits to people who use it. It’s damn near impossible to hurt yourself with it, so it makes sense to keep plenty of it on hand.

Humboldt County growers take this for granted, but they know that having plenty of marijuana really helps reduce stress. They know about stress. Running an illegal business creates stress of its own. They have other stresses, just like anyone else, but they always have plenty of ganja, and they never have to worry about how much it costs.

They don’t have the stress of trying to figure out how to squeeze $40 out of a $300 paycheck, to pay for an eighth of an oz of marijuana, roughly four Humboldt County joints, and then how to budget that three-and-a-half grams of cannabis over seven days. They don’t know what it’s like to skip the dinner out, the concert or the new shirt because a few puffs of kind bud makes that 40 hours of customer-service hell they endure each week, tolerable, but that’s how the rest of America lives.

That’s only half of the price that Americans pay for marijuana. The middle-class subsidizes artificially high marijuana prices by paying taxes that pay for cops, jails and prison guards. The working poor subsidize artificially high marijuana prices by getting arrested and going to jail. That’s why Americans want marijuana legalized: They’re sick of subsidizing the marijuana industry while they work themselves to death for less and less every year.

Americans pay too damn much for marijuana, and they’re tired of skimping on everything else just for a taste of the kind green bud. They’re tired of paying black-market prices, tired of dealing with black-market dealers, and sick of being treated like criminals, just so that a handful of smug, self-righteous, and self-absorbed dope yuppies can perpetually congratulate themselves for being so “alternative”.

Yeah, Humboldt County dope yuppies are so “alternative”… the way a tick is “alternative”. Now plug in that fucking pump and hand me the Saran Wrap.

I can’t believe how rapidly smoking culture has evolved, just in my lifetime. When I was a kid, my parents both smoked cigarettes… indoors. Damn near every table in the house had an ashtray on it, some had two. They had fancy ashtrays, for special occasions, and they had everyday ashtrays. They even had extra ashtrays in a drawer in case they had company.

I remember that you used to be able to buy ashtrays in stores, and they had lots of different kinds. They had cheap disposable ashtrays stamped from foil,

nice expensive ashtrays that looked like they belonged on an executive’s desk,

glass ashtrays,

metal ashtrays,

ashtrays carved from solid rock,

and an amazing assortment of ceramic ashtrays.

These things really existed. I distinctly remember ashtrays,

avocado-green boomerang-shaped ashtrays,

round mosaic-tiled ashtrays, as big as a dinner plate, that weighed at least ten lbs,

stacks of brightly-colored mod-looking ashtrays manufactured from some sort of polymer resin.

I know I remember ashtrays.

You would see one of these things, and you immediately knew what it was. You wouldn’t dream of using it for anything else. Even if it was brand new, people would look at you like you had lost your mind if you decided to, for instance, eat pudding out of an ashtray.

The intended purpose of an ashtray was to provide a non-flammable place to rest a lit cigarette, a suitable receptacle for flicked ashes, and a surface onto which a cigarette butt could be safely snuffed out. Ashtrays came in a bewildering array styles because people wanted their ashtrays to match the decor of the rooms those ashtrays would inhabit.

Do you remember ashtrays? I know there are young people out there right now thinking “ash trays?”, like they never saw those two words combined before. They have no idea what I’m talking about. They’ve never seen an ashtray, not even on TV. If you wanted to show a kid an ashtray, where would you go? If you wanted an ashtray for yourself, where would you go to buy one?

The disappearance of ashtrays, coupled with the number of people I’ve seen sitting under the eves of their own homes tells me that very few people smoke cigarettes indoors anymore. If you can’t do it in stores, bars or restaurants, and nowadays people won’t even do it in their own homes, cigarette smoking seems to have become an exclusively outdoor activity.

I’m mostly happy about this. I don’t smoke cigarettes, and I have become much more sensitive to cigarette smoke. I can’t imagine living with someone who insisted on smoking cigarettes indoors today, but I also feel for smokers. It must be a drag to have to excuse yourself from a warm cozy room to go stand outside in the cold, rain, snow, wind, heat, whatever, with nothing but a coffee can full of sand for your butts, like some kind of exile. That’s harsh.

At the same time, marijuana smoking has become much more accepted. As a result, you can find boutiques all over this country that cater to marijuana smokers. You’ll find these shops stocked to the gills with a dizzying array of new smoking products ranging from vaporizers and dabbing nails, to hookahs and bongs to bubblers, hand pipes and rolling papers, no ashtrays, oddly enough, but tons of other smoking accessories.

I don’t know what pot smokers are supposed to do with the ashes that result from smoking marijuana, but the free market has provided them with a million new ways to turn marijuana into ash. After that, pot smokers are pretty much on their own.

From the look of all of this new smoking gear, nearly everyone who smokes marijuana, does it indoors. Half of the new vaporizers plug into a wall outlet. Not many of those out in the woods. Nobody takes a glass bong the size of a bassoon to go get high in the park. Giant, conspicuous smoking apparatuses like that, stay at home, in a room.

I’m sure that part of the reason people smoke pot at home is the legal environment. Because of marijuana prohibition, pot smokers have gotten used to smoking in secret, so they do it privately, behind closed doors. Even now that two states have made smoking marijuana a legal recreational activity, both Washington and Colorado still prohibit marijuana use in public. It seems that even as legalization takes hold, considerable social pressure remains to keep marijuana smoking an indoor activity.

Today, we see cigarette smokers outside under the eves with their cancer sticks and their can of sand, while marijuana smokers sit comfy and warm in their blacklit bedrooms with their Rube Goldberg meets Dr. Seuss smoking contraptions,

and maybe an old saucer that they drop their ashes into, or perhaps a potted plant. I use an oyster shell, personally. I don’t know what other people do.

It’s got to be rough for people who smoke both marijuana and cigarettes. They smoke some pot, but then they’ll have to step outside for a cigarette. They’ll have to ask someone to hold their contraption, go stand under the eve, smoke their butt, come back in, enjoy a few tokes, then it’s back out under the eves again. These people need revolving doors, and when was the last time you saw one of those.

It kind of reminds me of segregation. I know it’s not the same thing by a long shot, but cigarette smokers used to rule the world. They wouldn’t even ask, “Do you mind if I smoke?” before they lit up. The air belonged to them, and if you didn’t like it, too bad. Businesses put ashtrays everywhere, just to remind cigarette smokers that they were welcome to fill the establishment with foul smelling fumes, and free matches, bearing the company logo were always close by.

Now cigarette smokers stand out in the cold like dogs who don’t know how to behave indoors, while marijuana smokers sit on the sofa in climate controlled comfort, fondling their preposterous pyrex party pipes, looking around for someplace to dump their freshly cashed bowl. My how the tables have turned, but I’ll bet you won’t find an ashtray on any of them.

grangerize (grain jer eyes) v to illustrate by inserting engravings or photographs from other books. Also to mutilate books to obtain material for such illustrations. Derived from the English author James Granger, who used this method to illustrate his book: Biographical History of England.

James Granger

How about that! There’s a word to describe the method I use to illustrate this blog.

I guess that makes me a grangerizer. …or maybe I could call myself a Granger Ranger.

What People Say:

If you haven't read john hardin's blog before, prepare to be shocked. I always am. (I can't help but enjoy it though...at least when I'm not slapping my hands on my computer desk and yelling at him.) He's sort of a local Jon Stewart only his writing hurts more because it is so close to people and places I love. Kym Kemp
...about, On The Money, The Collapsing Middle Class
... I think he really nails it, the middle class is devolving back into the working class. Pretty brilliant, IMO. Juliet Buck, Vermont Commons http://www.vtcommons.org/blog/middle-class-or-first-world-subsistence
BLOGS WE WATCH: John Hardin’s humorous, inappropriate, and sometimes antisocial SoHum blog is a one-of-a-kind feast or famine breadline banquet telling it like it is—or at least how it is through Mr. Hardin’s uniquely original point of view with some off-the-wall poetic licensing and colorful pics tossed in for good measure. For example, how it all went from this to that and how it all came about like the hokey pokey with your right foot out. You get the idea. Caution: this isn’t for everybody, especially those without a bawdy, bawdry, and tacky sense of humor. You know who you are. We liked it. (From the Humboldt Sentinel http://humboldtsentinel.com/2011/12/16/weekly-roundup-for-december-16-2011/)